CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming at you live from the 20Ω6 R’lyeh Olympics.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and it’s my honor to be providing filler commentary for the 20Ω6 R’lyeh Olympics to fill the dead space in between events that our viewers at home are interested in.

CARL: I suppose we could be covering the Clean and Jerk Souls Out Of Writhing Physical Forms events, but as all Americans have been eliminated from contention, it would be an impermissable sin to ask our viewers to cheer for a Canadian.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. The big news today is about the American athlete Byron Lackey’s allegations that he was beaten, robbed, and had his soul partially sucked out and the gozzamer threads of his sanity partially unwound. This after his disappointing silver medal loss to, of all places, Belize in the 100-meter Ichor Doomstroke.

CARL: Lackey claimed that he was assaulted by a Cthuloid poasing as a City of R’lyeh Police officer. However, records colelcted by the Gibbering Eyes in the Olympic Village paint a different and far darker picture of the events.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. It seems that, rather than being robbed, Lackey in fact was drunk on space colour after his narrow loss and had vandalized a City of R’Lyeh Police shoggoth cruiser. Gibbering Eye footage shows him urinating, spray painting, and finally kicking it.

CARL: Furthermore, it seems that the robbery story was concocted by Lackey and his teammates to cover for the fact that the gelatinous shoggoth clung to, removed, and consumed Lackey’s pants during the altercation and he had to accound for their absence.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. US Olympic authorities have in fact withdrawn their earlier support of Lackey, and the chief of police has in fact consumed his passport to hold in his abdominal sac as a flight risk.

CARL: The standard R’lyeh punishment for this sort of false accusation, without taking into account the vandalism that preceded it, is to be cast among the Deep Ones to live as their slave until their unhuman rituals drain the soul and leave nothing but a degenerate husk behind, which is then devoured by the Elder Things as part of the ritual that foreshadows the coming revival of their race.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, though anonymous sources inside the City of R’lyeh Police have said that Lackey may face a lighter penalty in the interest of preventing a diplomatic incident until such a time as the stars are right. Lackey may only be forced to transfer his soul into a vessel of the Deep Ones’ choice, to slowly undergo the horrifying metamorphosis that is their fate.

CARL: Not a good sign for Lackey’s appearance at the 20∆0 Olympics in Celephaïs.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, not a good sign at all. Though some are claiming that Lackey’s punishment is still impermissably light compared to that of Ginger Douglas, the American gold medalist in Rythmic Shapeshifting.

CARL: She was pilloried in the press for failing to salute the American flag during her medal ceremony, despite the fact that no other medalist or audience member before or since has ever done so. Yet because she is Atlantean on her father’s side and Lackey is a brodude, some say that their penalties are mismatched.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. Ms. Douglas was punished by switching bodies with a liquifying corpse and put to work delivering singing telegrams all over R’lyeh.